RACE FORWARD
Catalyzing Racial Justice
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Race Forward: 1) works with community groups, government, and national organizations to develop and implement policy ideas; 2) builds leadership capacity through multi-racial coalition building, convenings, leadership development, and trainings; 3) develops and share tools to advance narrative and cultural power, narrative and cultural equity, and narrative and cultural justice for communities of color; and 4) develops and implement institutional and sectoral change strategies to operationalize structural racial equity.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
INSTITUTIONAL AND SECTORAL CHANGE
Race Forward’s Institutional and Sectoral Change Department seeks to establish racial equity practice in an entire field (rather than organization by organization) on a long-term basis. The work includes facilitating Learning Cohorts in these sectors, developing tools for long-term change, and tracking the shifts through case studies and blogs that demonstrate their applicability. This Department has three major programmatic areas.
• The Governmental Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE). The primary focus of our institutional and sectoral change strategy continues to be with local government, via the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE). The GARE network has grown from 55 members in November 2017 to nearly 75 in March 2018 and exceeded 191 members at in December of 2019. GARE is represented in 28 states, two Canadian provinces, and the District of Columbia.
• Philanthropic Change. The Philanthropic Change Initiative considers our efforts to develop a teachable narrative that promotes a racial justice frame for equitable practices in philanthropy, and to scale this narrative for potential adoption throughout the entire philanthropic sector.
• Racial Equity Training and Capacity Building. Race Forward provides a range of training and scheduled educational programs, ranging from single-day explorations of structural racism to multi-month Cohorts where groups of organizations develop specific programs (known as Racial Equity Action Plans ) to advance racial equity.
NARRATIVE, ARTS, AND CULTURE
Our Narrative, Arts, and Culture Department works strategically in and through journalism, communications, the arts, popular culture, and cultural organizing to build and secure a culture that centers equity and justice for all. This Department has three major programmatic areas.
• Colorlines. Colorlines advances the stories that are important for all interested in racial and cultural equity and justice. The platform reaches 300,000 people monthly, bringing our readers news, criticism, and analysis to the racial justice movement.
• Strategic Communications. This program area lifts up and advances our research, training, and collective work through transformative messages, stories, and narratives that advance equity and justice in our communities and our world.
• Narrative and Cultural Strategies. This program establishes and advances common language and best practices to advance equity and justice in the arts and cultural sectors, and develops and advances narrative and cultural strategy across sectors and the movement as a whole. Featured efforts narrative change efforts include:
o The Arts Lab, which provides training to improve racial equity in the performing arts;
o The Immigrant Futures Lab, which is working to advance an immigrant and migrant justice narrative system with a robust infrastructure and vibrant ecosystem to challenge the domination of anti-immigrant narratives; and
o The Housing Narrative Change Initiative, which works to center the deep experiences of frontline communities and build power for narratives that lift up the value of safe, affordable, and secure housing.
MOVEMENT CAPACITY BUILDING
The Movement and Capacity Building Department builds leadership and capacity within the racial justice movement for grassroots organizations and other institutions to advance racial equity on a national scale. This Department has three major programmatic areas.
• Movement Building and Leadership Development. Race Forward believes that a strong movement for racial justice requires that communities and institutions across multiple sectors of society -- government, philanthropy, and nonprofits -- must operationalize racial equity in their policies, practices, programs, and procedures. We are in the midst of developing a dedicated Leadership Development program that will train a Cohort composed of the leadership of communities of color in a multi-sector movement building space, helping them to collectively develop a comprehensive approach for advancing racial justice in their communities.
• “Race and…” Presentations and Webinars. The “Race And…” presentations and webinars were part of a special series that explores the many ways that race compounds and intersects with all the other issues faced by people of color. These presentations are prepared and released as opportunities present themselves.
• Policy. Policy work, previously housed in their own Department in Race Forward, has been shifted to Movement and Capacity Building in recognition of the importance of our issue-based work in supporting grassroots leadership development movement building. The policy programmatic work has centered on three areas of effort:
○ Energy Democracy, in which we use a racial equity lens and analysis in renewable energy policy and planning. We are the lead national organization coordinating 100% Cities;
○ The Built Environment, in which the structural racism element in the physical structures that surround our lives (e.g., housing, transportation, and education) are addressed in cooperation with community-based cohorts and other regional stakeholders by promoting relationship building, facilitating capacity building, and providing technical assistance to address a range of built environment issue areas; and
○ Food Equity, in which Race Forward provides food security research and materials and supports community organizations dealing with food security issues. We spent the majority of 2019 attending partner convenings, continuing to deepen relationships with existing partners, and connecting allies in the food equity movement to our connections in GARE.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Applied Research provides analysis and materials to help activists, teachers, advocates, and government officials articulate and pursue racial equity standards in their work. It also provides assistance to external partners with which we interact, helping them to assess the effectiveness of their own initiatives and the consistency of their own internal operations. This Department has two major programmatic areas.
• Specific Programmatic Research. The Research Department supports a range of investigations into the specific programmatic objectives of Race Forward and its partners. One current programmatic research effort is the Racial Equity Survey to which over 50,000 government employees working for jurisdictions that are members of GARE are expected to respond. The results of this survey will help Race Forward track and monitor racially equity improvements across time and across jurisdictions for evaluative, descriptive, and potentially predictive purposes.
• Impact Planning and Evaluation. Our research work focuses not only on external projects, but also on assessing and evaluating the impact of Race Forward’s own work. We have redefined the role of one of our team members to increase our capacity for impact planning and evaluation and are developing processes to standardize our evaluation efforts.
CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL INITIATIVES
Race Forward has three cross-departmental priorities.
• Facing Race Conference. Facing Race is a multi-racial, multi-issue, intergenerational conference that highlights campaigns, projects, research and art that promotes systemic solutions to racial justice challenges. The Conference is held biannually and will next take place in November 2020 in Raleigh, NC.
• Place-Based Strategies. Race Forward’s approach to place-based work takes the components of our Theory of Change and situates them within the unique social and political context of a particular geographic location. This allows the creation of highly effective, highly localized spaces where people come together across issue areas and sectors to develop long-term strategies that shift power and resources to indigenous communities and communities of color.
• Mass Freedom. Criminalization encompasses the institutional attitudes and rules that build the systemic racism that results in people being caged physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally, reducing them to criminals without the right to dictate their own lived experiences. Mass Freedom confronts mass incarceration and mass deportation by mobilizing multiracial systemic solutions against the carceral state. It uses a place-based approach to develop region-specific approaches, organizing on a national level and amplified by FRED Talks (educational, inspirational, and motivational presentations by people directly engaged in or affected by the efforts to achieve racial equity). The work is supported by Shattered Families, a field-level research effort into methodologies to increase the humanity and reduce the trauma associated with family separations that can take place during immigration case reviews.
Where we work
External reviews

Videos
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
internal time/capacity
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
RACE FORWARD
Board of directorsas of 09/29/2023
Lori Bezahler
President, Hazen Foundation
LeeAnn Hall
Northwest Federation of Community Organizations
Sharda Sekaran
Drug Policy Alliance
Lori Bezahler
Edward Hazen Foundation
Ron Shiffman
Graduate Center for Planning, Pratt Institute
Ramon Ramirez
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste
Kavitha Mediratta
Executive Director. Atlantic Fellows for Racial Justice
Christi Tran
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Kevin Allis
National Congress of American Indians
Gary Delgado
Retired
Rodney Foxworth
Common Future
Richard Kim
Huffington Post
Aletha Maybank
American Medical Association
Ralph Remington
Director of Cultural Affairs, San Francisco Arts Commission
Sean Thomas-Breitfeld
Building Movement Project
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 06/07/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.